Pavement Life Cycle Research Articles

Minimizing the global warming impact of pavement infrastructure through reinforcement learning

Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies are frequently used to evaluate the environmental burdens of pavement facilities. This information can be used by decision-makers to advise their construction and maintenance policies. Within the pavement life cycle, there are a variety of uncertainties, such as future traffic growth and pavement deterioration. Currently, there is a lack of research examining the use of LCA models that can simultaneously optimize construction and maintenance plans while accounting for several sources of uncertainty. This study presents an approach to LCA modeling that implements a sub-type of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms called Q-learning. Q-learning offers a model-free approach that can efficiently manage stochastic problems of parametric and non-parametric form. The algorithm iteratively learns a set of near-optimal decision rules to proactively manage pavement assets for a diverse range of possible future scenarios. These decision-rules are stored in a convenient look-up table, which will appeal to practitioners for its ease of use in probabilistic LCA studies. This paper subsequently tests the performance of the Q-learning approach across three representative case studies with varying traffic volumes: a local street-highway, a state highway, and an interstate. The case study results show that, on average, the proposed algorithm reduces the expected global warming impact of pavement infrastructure between 13% and 18% over a 50-year analysis period. Based on our results, Q-learning is a promising approach that can help decision-makers account for several sources of uncertainty and implement improved management strategies to mitigate the environmental impacts of their products and systems.

Use of environmental product declarations (EPDs) of pavement materials in the United States of America (U.S.A.) to ensure environmental impact reductions

Recent green public procurement (GPP) initiatives in the U.S.A. rely on the use of the construction materials EPDs. EPD programs, however, were initiated by the material manufacturers, motivated by their interest to use EPDs as communication tools, improve production efficiency, and extend outreach. The goal of GPP initiatives is to produce the environmental improvements, however, it is unclear if the current EPD programs and GPP mechanisms can reliably support that goal. This study investigates the use of EPDs in GPP to ensure the environmental improvement of materials (use of EPDs as a procurement aid) and pavements (use of EPDs as a data source). The objective of this study was to identify prerequisites, challenges, implementation frameworks that include stakeholders and ensure environmental benefits with EPDs. A review of to-date EPD programs for pavement materials, communication with stakeholders, and analysis of pavement life cycle assessment (LCA) were performed. The use of EPDs that ensures environmental improvements of materials is contingent on EPD consistency and PCR prescriptiveness. EPDs can be suitable as data sources in pavement LCA due to their availability, transparency, and because they facilitate collaboration and improvements throughout the supply chain. However, it is noteworthy that if EPDs are used in that capacity, harmonization of all relevant PCRs and the establishment of aligned pavement LCA framework are necessary for reliable environmental improvements. The availability of public background data can support both EPD development and GPP efforts, by providing transparency, inclusivity, and low costs of LCA. Greater automation, systems for data transfer and management, and increased stakeholder collaboration can also support GPP in a way that ensures environmental improvements of pavement materials and infrastructure.

LCA and LCCA based multi-objective optimization of pavement maintenance

With growing maintenance demands whereas limited budgets, an integrated methodology unifying life-cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle cost assessment (LCCA) and multi-objective optimization is proposed to establish maintenance decision-making system, considering performance, economic as well as environmental dimensions. Firstly, system scope and unit process of the methodology are redefined considering pavement industry in China. Next, assessment models and parameters are determined to establish the inventory. Then, LCCA is adopted to convert environmental footprint into an economically measurable unit - environmental damage cost (EDC). Lastly, a programming optimization is executed to obtain the optimal maintenance schedule over the whole pavement life cycle. To verify, a case study based on an existing highway in southeast China is conducted, considering ECA-10 thin overly (ECA-10), milling and resurfacing the upper layer (MRU) and hot-in-place rehabilitation (HR) strategies. Results indicate that user cost is the dominant factor whereas environmental impact is relatively negligible. Pavement design life and service life of maintenance alternatives have significant influence on the optimal schedule, and longer pavement design life should be considered when conducting LCA-based programming optimization. With the extension of design life, MRU shows the best long-term benefit. Materials and construction are the main stages potentially improved. Few attempts have been made to introduce LCA into the pavement industry of China, but this model successfully contributes to sustainability goal and scientific decision-making.

Life cycle inventory of bitumen in South Africa

Road pavements are constructed of bulk raw materials such as aggregate, cement, bitumen and water. The environmental, social, and economic impacts of the materials and processes should be quantified and monitored towards the optimisation of pavement design. At present, no such protocol is in place in South Africa. This paper proposes a framework for the development of a pavement life cycle assessment model, starting by documenting the life cycle inventory for bitumen, one of the leading environmental and social burdensome materials used for pavement development.This inventory acts as the first building block in the development of a life cycle assessment model by evaluating and delineating primary flows (inputs of materials and energy and outputs of pollution) related to the supply chain of bitumen in South Africa. The primary flows are represented by indicators which measure their quantitative impacts. The inventory provides impact category indicators for environmental and social related emissions, energy- and water-use and currently excludes other indicators such as emissions to water, waste generation, jobs creation and economic transformation, amongst others. These indicators are omitted due to lack of quality data at present and difficulty in the quantification of impacts, but recognition is given to their relevancy and importance.The approach is envisioned to function as the first version of a living protocol that will be improved on through further research. Although the primary target audience is South African road authorities, the approach can be adapted for use in any country.

Eco-based pavement lifecycle maintenance scheduling optimization for equilibrated networks

This paper proposes a bi-level mathematical programming framework for pavement maintenance to minimize fuel consumption in equilibrated networks. The proposed model extends research in the area by formulating the interaction between network equilibrium and various maintenance activities. The volume of traffic, age of the pavement, initial conditions, and interference due to maintenance are considered in developing this long-term deterioration model. The fuel consumption induced by roughness and traffic disruption is further investigated in the optimization process. A modified active set algorithm with nested sub-programming is developed to generate the detailed solutions. The performance of the proposed model was tested by comparing it with two other mainstream strategies: worst first and threshold control. The results show that eco-based method outperformed prevalent models by reducing extra fuel consumption by 20%. They thus show that eco-based optimal scheduling has the potential to aid in long-term maintenance decisions and reduce the energy cost.

A systematic approach to estimate global warming potential from pavement vehicle interaction using Canadian Long-Term Pavement Performance data

Pavement vehicle interaction (PVI) is one of the significant components in the use phase of pavement life cycle assessment. This component has attribution with excess fuel consumption, resulting in an increase in the global warming potential (GWP). Several research have been conducted to model and quantify the PVI effect based on pavement roughness and deflection. These models estimate excess fuel consumption considering traffic loading, engineering properties of pavement materials and pavement design specifications. However, a big question remains unanswered: how do various climatic parameters including precipitation, temperature, and freezing index influence the PVI and subsequent GWP? Canada is the second largest country in the world and different climate regions can be found in each of its ten provinces and three territories. Therefore, a new, climate-based clustering approach—rather than geometric boundaries is introduced for climate impact analysis from road system. Twenty-two Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) road sections located in the Canadian highways have been selected for this study. These road sections were clustered based on homogenous climate conditions, using a statistical approach. The research finds that a combination of high precipitation, freezing index and medium temperature are associated with an accelerated rate of International Roughness Index (IRI) and consequent GWP because of a high PVI for poor pavement surface. GWP for roughness is found to be very low where high temperature and a low freezing index exist. Very high traffic loading and low subgrade stiffness, when combined, produced the highest GWP emissions because of deflection based PVI. It was also found that the PVI effect in terms of GWP for both roughness and deflection is always dominant for heavy vehicles over light vehicles traffic.

Environmental impact comparison of new micro-milling and thin overlay and conventional milling for sustainable pavement preservation

Micro-milling and thin overlay, a new pavement preservation treatment developed and first implemented by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) in 2007, as an alternative pavement preservation to conventional milling and resurfacing, is used to remove and replace a thin, deteriorated open-graded surface layer (2.2 cm) without disturbing the sound underlying layer. This paper focuses on quantifying micro-milling and thin overlay’s environmental impacts by comparing conventional milling and overlay with micro-milling and thin overlay to complement the previous economic impact study. The environmental impacts are quantified using a pavement construction decision tool entitled Pavement Life-Cycle Assessment Tool for Environmental and Economic Effects (PaLATE). The results show a 60% reduction in all environmental impacts assessed, including energy usage, water consumption, and CO2 emissions largely due to the savings in asphalt needed. Results have demonstrated that this new method is a promising pavement preservation alternative that is environmentally sustainable. This paper provides quantitative comparison information useful for transportation agencies in selecting sustainable pavement preservation alternatives.

Investigating the Effect of Hydrophobic Additives in Moisture Damage Reduction of Asphalt Mixtures

In order to increase the life of the asphalt mixture and reduce the cost of the pavement life cycle, methods must be provided to improve the quality. Accordingly, the effects of aggregate surface coating with hydrophobic material in order to modify the aggregate mixture’s polar properties and reduce its hydrophilic properties are investigated. To this end, limestone and granite aggregates, 60-70 bitumen, and Two types of additives were used as the primary materials for the construction of asphalt mixtures. Thermodynamic concepts with cyclic loading have been used to evaluate the effects of these additives. The results obtained in this study indicate that the hydrophobic coating on the aggregate surface has increased the acidic components and decreased the alkaline components of the surface free energy for both types of aggregates. These changes will increase the bitumen-aggregate adhesion and make a better coating of bitumen on the aggregate surface. The results based on thermodynamic concepts suggest that the aggregate surface coating has reduced the system’s separation energy and the desire for stripping. The results of the dynamic modulus in wet to dry conditions also approve this outcome. The combination of thermodynamic concepts and the cyclic loading results show that the coating on the aggregate surface has reduced the aggregate’s stripping from bitumen. It is also obvious that the samples made with granite aggregates, which have acidic properties, are prone to moisture damage and have a higher tendency to strip.

A hybrid fuzzy multi-attribute decision making model to select road pavement type

Pavement is an important part of a road structure. Selection of road pavement type is one of the important challenges of decision making by highway administrators. The life-cycle cost analysis is one of the common tools to select the pavement type which considers economic criteria such as costs of construction, maintenance and rehabilitation, and user costs; however, noneconomic criteria are neglected. The inadequate selection of road pavement type tends to increase the pavement life-cycle cost and impacts both environmental and social parameters. In this study, a three-step hybrid model is proposed to solve this problem. Initially, the causal relationships of main criteria affecting the pavement type selection are determined using decision making trial and evaluation laboratory. Then, the weight and importance of criteria and sub-criteria are determined using fuzzy analytic network process. Finally, the ranking of pavement alternatives is carried out using a fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution. A real case study consisting of five different types of pavements including hot mix asphalt, stone mastic asphalt, jointed plain concrete pavement, roller compacted concrete pavement with hot mix asphalt overlay and continuous reinforced concrete pavement is used to show the validity of the proposed model.

CLASSIFICATION AND APPLICATION OF SOILS STABILIZED WITH HYDRAULIC BINDER IN ACCORDANCE WITH EUROPEAN STANDARDS

Soils being the most widely used materials for road building industry predominantly contribute the improvement of their mechanical and/or technological properties. Relating to the world-wide experience in road building industry, the most effective method for such improvement is treatment of soils with hydraulic binder under optimum water content. Those mixtures being properly compacted set and harden by hydraulic reaction and give stabilized soils. Requirements and classification of hydraulically stabilized soils established by European standards provide wide possibilities for soils application considering their performance in pavement layers. The elaboration of Ukrainian standards identical to the European standards relating hydraulically stabilized soils should permit the elongated life cycle of pavement and also decrease expenses on repairs of road pavements caused by deformation of sub-grade. This article reviews classification and application of hydraulically stabilized soils according to the requirements of European standards. In accordance with European standards, stabilized soils are classified as hydraulically bound mixtures which properties are covered by Specifications on Hydraulically Bound Mixtures (European Standard EN 14227, Part 15). To conform the standard requirements soils should be treated by standard hydraulic binder (or a combination thereof): cement, slag, fly ash, lime, or a standard hydraulic road binder should be applied. Composition and methods of manufacturing (compaction) of specimens of hydraulically stabilized soils give several strength classes of stabilized materials with the highest category characterized by the cubes compressive strength not less than 12 MPa. European standards establish also classification of hydraulically stabilized soils by tensile strength Rt in combination with elastic modulus E; according to that classification the stabilized materials are divided into five categories from T1 to T5. European standards establish also classification of fresh mixtures by immediate bearing index. This value determines the suitability of a compacted layer to support the immediate trafficking. Nevertheless, that requirement may not cover cement-stabilized mixtures for construction of layers which are not intended to be trafficked for 7 days. The in-situ manufacture of stabilized mixtures needs some measures to minimize the inadequacy of properties of a material, or geometry of a layer such as an increased proportion of a binder or an increased layer thickness. Keywords: hydraulically stabilized soils, classification, compressive strength, immediate bearing index, construction of a layer.

All for one: Centralized optimization of truck platoons to improve roadway infrastructure sustainability

With the introduction of connected and autonomous trucks (CATs), truck platooning is expected to be more feasible and prevalent. The reported benefits of the truck platooning include regularizing traffic, reducing congestion, increasing highway safety, and decreasing fuel consumption and emission. Truck platooning may, however, decrease pavement longevity because it would cause channelized load application and hinder the healing properties of asphalt concrete. This study proposes a centralized control strategy that converts the pavement-related challenges of truck platooning into opportunities. This strategy leverages the auto-pilot technologies in CATs by optimizing the lateral position of each platoon or group of platoons. The efficiency of the proposed control strategy was demonstrated in a case study. Results showed that pavement life-cycle costs could be reduced up to 50% by controlling the lateral position of the platoons for each day.

The energy consumption and emission of polyurethane pavement construction based on life cycle assessment

Polyurethane-bounded pavement with good road performances is a new pavement form. Whether polyurethane (PU) pavement met the requirements of energy conservation, environmental protection and sustainable development or not, the energy consumption and emission of PU pavement in whole life cycle were analyzed systematically in this paper. Firstly, the life cycle of pavement was divided into six phases: material production, mixture production, transportation, construction, maintenance and recycling according to the construction technology of road in China. Based on the classification of the life cycle environmental impact assessment (LCIA), the effects of six main exhaust gases (CO2, CH4, N2O, CO, SO2, NOx) were divided into four categories: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), Photochemical Smog Potential (POCP) and Acidification Potential (AP). Secondly, the energy consumption and emission of each phase are studied, and the main phase with significant environmental impact was selected. Thirdly, the results of inventory would be normalized and weighted to analyze the environmental impact by the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The LCIA method was environmental design of industrial product 97 (EDIP 97). Results show that the construction of PU pavement is conducive to energy conservation. Besides, the energy consumption of mixture production phase is the largest in asphalt pavement, and it is material production phase in PU pavement. In terms of emission, the emissions mainly occur in material production and mixture production phases in asphalt pavement, and it is material production phase in PU pavement. Under the same structure, the construction of PU pavement is not conducive to reducing the emission, and will enlarge the GWP, EP and AP. For example, the CO2, N2O and NOx emissions of PU pavement are 1.98, 5.30 and 2.35 times higher than that of asphalt pavement respectively, but the CO emission of asphalt pavement is 3.86 times higher than that of PU pavement. Furthermore, the results of LCIA show that the score of all environmental impact of PU pavement is little smaller than that of asphalt pavement after normalization and weighting. However, the road performances of PU pavement are much better than that of asphalt pavement. With the same environmental impact, PU pavement has a longer service life. It is summarized that PU pavement meets the requirements of environmental protection and sustainable development in the long run. This is conducive to the promotion and application of PU pavement.

Flexible Pavements and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Review and Implications

Flexible pavements and climate are interactive. Pavements are climate sensitive infrastructure, where climate can impact their deterioration rate, subsequent maintenance, and life-cycle costs. Meanwhile, climate mitigation measures are urgently needed to reduce the environmental impacts of pavements and related transportation on the macroclimate and microclimate. Current pavement design and life cycle management practices may need to be modified to adapt to changing climates and to reduce environmental impacts. This paper reports an extensive literature search on qualitative and quantitative pavement research related to climate change in recent years. The topics cover climate stressors, sensitivity of pavement performance to climatic factors, impacts of climate change on pavement systems, and, most importantly, discussions of climate change adaptation, mitigation, and their interactions. This paper is useful for those who aim to understand or research the climate resilience of flexible pavements.

Integrating life-cycle assessment and life-cycle cost analysis to select sustainable pavement: A probabilistic model using managerial flexibilities

Sustainable development requires decision-making systems based on sustainability criteria and overpassing just economic and financial criteria. Integration of life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) and life-cycle assessment (LCA) to select pavement alternative is a solution to address economic and environmental issues simultaneously. While most of current methods related to sustainable design of pavements consider environmental parameters as economic factors i.e. cost, this paper takes the two criteria of carbon emissions and energy consumption into account. Moreover the presented method considers the embedded managerial flexibilities which are available due to existing uncertainties in pavement project valuation procedure. Agency costs, user costs, carbon emissions, and energy consumption are considered as the main criteria, and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) technique is used with a recursive procedure for analyzing flexibility in each time step of pavement life-cycle. For making the best decision in each time step and the best overall alternative, technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is used, and the best alternatives are reported. The model is applied in a highway project in Iran to demonstrate its capabilities to analyze the sustainability of different asphalt and concrete alternatives for pavement projects. Various alternatives of the two pavement types are compared and it is clarified that the best asphalt alternative has lower life-cycle costs but more carbon emissions and much more energy consumption. Selection of concrete pavement instead of asphalt pavement in last decade in Iran, will approximately 35% increase related costs but it will result in about 2,000,000 tons of carbon emissions reduction and 700,000 GJ reduction in energy consumption annually.

Design and maintenance of airport aprons: recommendations from thermomechanical analysis

In this study, general recommendations for apron design are made by analysing the thermomechanical behaviour of concrete pavements under the effects of aircraft traffic and the environment. This analysis provides designers with data for decision-making on dimensioning to minimise maintenance costs throughout the pavement lifecycle. Pavement thermal differentials and stresses were compared for five Brazilian regions, as represented by the capitals Brasilia, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo, and Teresina, considering the ambient temperature, solar radiation and typically-used coarse aggregate for each region. Parametric analyses for the pavement thermal differentials and stresses were also carried out. Thermal simulations were performed using a numerical model and ANSYS®/Multiphysic (Version 15.0) software, and structural simulations were performed using EverFE (Version 2.23) software. The resulting recommendations for the effective management of airport design provide clear guidance for the definition of metrics for managing apron pavement lifecycles.

Influence of Aggregate–Binder Adhesion on Fatigue Life of Asphalt Mixtures

Abstract The adhesiveness between aggregate and asphalt binder is believed to affect the life cycle of asphalt pavements, mainly in the presence of water. One of the most common asphalt pavement distresses is fatigue cracking. The objective of this article is to investigate the relationship between adhesion properties and fatigue life of asphalt mixtures. The asphalt bond strength test was used to measure adhesion (pull-off tensile strength) at two different moisture conditioning states: unconditioned (or dry) and conditioned in distilled water for 24 h at 40°C. The test consists of measuring the pull-off pressure required to break an aggregate–binder interface, called the pull-off tensile strength. For the fatigue damage characterization of the mixtures, controlled crosshead sinusoidal tension-compression tests were used, associated with the Simplified Viscoelastic Continuum Damage modeling protocol. Four asphalt mixtures were investigated. They share the same aggregate gradation but differ in aggregate source (two different sources) and the presence or absence of an anti-stripping agent. The mixture with pure asphalt binder showed higher values of pull-off tensile strength than mixtures with asphalt binder doped by an anti-stripping agent. However, the analysis of the pull-off tensile strength ratio (comparison between unconditioned and moisture-conditioned specimens) showed that the addition of anti-stripping agent provided significant moisture damage resistance in the aggregate–binder interface. Results also show that mixtures with asphalt binder modified by anti-stripping agent had higher simulated fatigue life than mixtures with pure asphalt binder. Excellent correlations were obtained between the strain amplitude required to obtain a given @ Nf (strain amplitude @ Nf) with pull-off tensile strength, which confirms that the fatigue life of asphalt mixtures is related to the adhesion between aggregate and asphalt binder.

Development of the Road Pavement Deterioration Model Based on the Deep Learning Method

In Korea, data on pavement conditions, such as cracks, rutting depth, and the international roughness index, are obtained using automatic pavement condition investigation equipment, such as ARAN and KRISS, for the same sections of national highways annually to manage their pavement conditions. This study predicts the deterioration of road pavement by using monitoring data from the Korean National Highway Pavement Management System and a recurrent neural network algorithm. The constructed algorithm predicts the pavement condition index for each section of the road network for one year by learning from the time series data for the preceding 10 years. Because pavement type, traffic load, and environmental characteristics differed by section, the sequence lengths (SQL) necessary to optimize each section were also different. The results of minimizing the root-mean-square error, according to the SQL by section and pavement condition index, showed that the error was reduced by 58.3–68.2% with a SQL value of 1, while pavement deterioration in each section could be predicted with a high coefficient of determination of 0.71–0.87. The accurate prediction of maintenance timing for pavement in this study will help optimize the life cycle of road pavement by increasing its life expectancy and reducing its maintenance budget.

Life Cycle Assessment of Warm Mix Asphalt with Recycled Concrete Aggregate

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a systematic methodology used to assess the potential environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product or system. Generally, the LCA is performed for all stages of the evaluated product; nevertheless, based on the goal and scope of an LCA study, several phases may be considered, whereas others may be excluded. In this study, an LCA was conducted to evaluate the potential environmental benefits related to the use of recycled concrete aggregates (RCA) as a partial replacement of natural aggregates in the production of Warm Mix Asphalt (WMA). In order to estimate the potential environmental impacts associated with the use of these alternative resources in the construction and rehabilitation of road pavements in Barranquilla, Colombia, primary data were collected in some companies in the region. The SimaPro 8.4.0 software was used for modelling the processes analyzed in the case study and all the life cycle inputs and outputs related to the functional unit were characterized during life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase into potential impacts according to the impact assessment methodology TRACI v.2.1. The pavement life cycle phases and processes included within the system boundaries were the following: (1) extraction and processing of natural and recycled aggregates and production of asphalt binder, (2) transportation of materials, and (3) production of the asphalt mixtures. Three percentages of RCA replacements were analyzed:15, 30 and 45%. By comparing both asphalt mixtures with different RCA replacements levels, it was shown that RCA use implies an increase in the optimal asphalt content, which in turn, originates higher potential environmental impacts than those stemming from conventional mixtures.

Predicting excess vehicle fuel use due to pavement structural response using field test results and finite element modelling

ABSTRACT The importance of pavement–vehicle interaction on fuel use is potentially large enough to warrant further investigation. Ever-growing traffic volumes world-wide make rolling resistance in the pavement life-cycle important for all roads. Pavement structural response contributes to rolling resistance and excess fuel consumption by dissipating vehicle energy in the pavement, which can be modelled as material hysteresis or delayed surface displacement causing the tire to push against the side of the deflection bowl. In this study, a comprehensive numerical modelling factorial is developed to determine the response of pavement structures under a wide range of contributing factors with modelling of asphalt pavement energy dissipation due to the viscoelastic structural response. The modelling considered the material-induced dissipated energy under moving traffic using a quasi-dynamic procedure incorporating viscoelastic response and damping mechanisms. Using the developed FE models and Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) test results, the dissipated energy responses for several different conditions were numerically quantified for ten field sections. Dissipated energy outputs of 720 moving load models were used to develop three reliable regression models over a wide range of variables to predict dissipated energy response without the need to routinely perform the finite element simulations.

Climate change impacts on asphalt road pavement construction and maintenance: An economic life cycle assessment of adaptation measures in the State of Virginia, United States

AbstractPavement design and management practices must be adapted in response to future climate change. While many studies have attempted to identify different methods to adapt pavements to future climate conditions, the potential economic impacts of the adaptations still remain largely unquantified. This study presents the results of a comprehensive life‐cycle cost analysis (LCCA) aimed at quantifying the potential economic impacts of a climate adaptation method, in which an upgraded asphalt binder (Performance Grade PG 76‐22) is used in the construction and maintenance of flexible pavement sections in lieu of the original binder (PG 70‐22) for improved resistance against high temperatures. For each of three major Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) districts with different climates, three case studies consisting of typical interstate, primary, and secondary pavement sections were considered. The LCCA accounted for the costs incurred during the mixture's production, maintenance, and use phases of the pavement life cycle by explicitly considering future climate projections, pavement life‐cycle performance, maintenance effects, and work zone user delays. The study concludes that pavements using the upgraded binder not only perform better over time but are also economically advantageous compared to those with the original binder under the conditions of the anticipated future climate conditions (2020–2039).